Hylomorphism in Political Theory: The Antinomy Between Inclusion/Exclusion

Describing the scope of political discussions is essential in political theory to develop a starting point, make assumptions, identify causations, make deductions, decide on methodology, and the like. This also leads to a division between subject and object of the political study and to decide who is the subject and object in terms of power relations, institutional applications, social and cultural impacts, and so on. Hence, it is hard to identify strict and crystal-clear definitions of them—unlike the severe attempt of the political science’s ambition for creating a scientific approach that involves boundaries between the subject and object of the study, implementing quantitative or qualitative methods involving specific analyses on behavioralism, rational choice, game theory, data collection from surveys or achieves, discourse analyses, etc. From the 1920s onward, the theoretical divisions also became more visible, parallel with the division between political science and political theory.

On the one hand, there was a solid attempt to universalize politics not only in terms of the state but also in terms of ruling and being ruled in a universalizing attempt. On the other hand, the ambiguity of the notion of politics emerges, refusing the universal and ubiquitous nature of the former understanding with the affirmation of exceptional cases in politics and specific cultural reflections occurring in certain stages of history. The first one includes themes such as law in Hans Kelsen’s (1934) The Pure Theory of Law—revised in 1967— based on legal postulates and achieving some coherence, or economics in Friedrich August von Hayek’s (1941) The Pure Theory of Capital that considers diverse and time-sensitive nature of capital investments is critical to examining economic cycles. Bertrand de Jouvenel’s (1963) piece, The Pure Theory of Politics, places political power into focus and analyzes how authority is maintained and exercised, considering the ethical and practical challenges inherent in political governance. James M. Buchanan’s (1949) The Pure Theory of Government Finance: A Suggested Approach proposes a framework for comprehending public finance, specifically focusing on government decisions about taxation and expenditure. Another approach—which could be defined as special political theory— defines politics as a unique and modern concept occurring in the 20th century and delves into what politics is. This perspective refuses to build a single causal explanation system and hierarchical relationships in the former one. According to Hannah Arendt (1958), for instance, politics is action in freedom and acting together in equality where we affirm our diversity. She also ascribes power as a positive value due to its nature that enables acting together. Likewise, she brings value to politics by tracing back to the ancient polis as being citizens together and acting together in equality. This correlation of politics is remarkable because we cannot find it everywhere, unlike in civilized communities. In On Human Conduct, Micheal Oakeshott (1975) agrees with Arendt in an affirmation that politics cannot be the same as ruling or to be ruled. He contributes with the idea that in modernity, persuasive discourse in political rhetoric has vital importance as opposed to the authoritative nature of ruling.

While it is necessary to be aware of socio-cultural and historical differences and also attempt to involve minorities in politics, especially in the 1980s onward with the new social developments, the scope of the politics could become too narrow. By paying too much attention to minor political issues, such as identity movements, ethnicity, environmentalism, or feminism, contemporary political theory embarking on new social movements gave rise to a problem of narrowing the scope of significant issues such as justice, fairness, equality, liberty, and freedom. It is also essential to define the scope of the study, agree on the concepts and notions, and define the subject-object of the study. However, it would lead to over-focusing on the too-specific issues and entering a loop in the included area. Hence, it is essential to ask if it is possible to have a synthesis between the included and the excluded. In ancient Greece, politics was intrinsically regarded as a philosophical value. In the contemporary age of political science, it is misleadingly associated with normativity. Nevertheless, it has deeper configurations in political theory, including normative, agonistic, radical, and skeptical theories. Nevertheless, in this paper, I will specifically focus on the philosophical side and consider politics itself is intrinsically bound to the domain of philosophy, whether analytical or continental. 

I consider the actuality/potentiality dichotomy immanent to the antinomy between inclusion/exclusion since every inclusion involves some actualities, and every exclusion involves some potentialities due to the lack of implementation. At this point, I will adapt the Aristotelian doctrine of hylomorphism, which involves the relationship between matter (hyle) and form (morphe). Hylomorphism has a dualistic structure in which every physical entity consists of matter and form; the first is what an object is made of, and the other is the pattern that gives the object its characteristics. Nevertheless, they are not separate from each other. On the contrary, they are two inseparable aspects of one substance. It is exemplified by the statue made of clay, which does not represent any meaning by itself. Clay (matter) requires actuality to become a statue (form) that has the potential to be shaped into various forms, like a plate or a mug, depending on the potter’s or artist’s design. In the end, change occurs when matter takes on a new form. Conceptually speaking, matter is considered with its passivity that can take on various forms, and the form is regarded with its activity that actualizes the potential of matter into a specific and identifiable object.

In political theory, the matter takes place as the populace or resources of a state, and the form can be associated with governing structures, laws, or ideologies. In the Aristotelian notion of hylomorphism, form has a hierarchical supremacy over the matter. Similarly, the populace or the state has been taken as passive structures that require ruling and being ruled, as mentioned above in general political theory’s impact. Even though they are bound to each other, form or ruling in a political sense excludes matter despite changing degrees of equality, liberty, and freedom in political systems. For instance, the citizens who comprise the electorate can be described as the matter, and the constitution, laws, and democratic institutions that shape how the populace participates in governance can be identified as form. Totalitarian regimes are the actualized forms of the matter that consist of the population and resources under the regime’s control within the implementation of the central ideology of communism or fascism imposed by a dictator or a ruling party. 

The hierarchical order between matter and form also applies to rational/irrational dichotomy. Meanwhile, scientific, measurable, and rationality-based attempts to conduct research in political science exclude the irrational, affective, and cultural values of societies. In Aristotelian philosophy, what people make unique and different from other living entities is their capacity to reason, implying a hierarchy of forms in which rationality is one of the highest forms. This unique position given to rational beings—humans—in the natural order makes them superior within nature and societal strata. Regarding the matter-form dichotomy, rationality can be defined as the actualization of the mind’s potential (giving the mind a physical entity) and a form that guides the development of intellectual capacities in a teleological structure. Rationality is defined as the form that guides human beings towards their goal, which involves pursuing knowledge and understanding. In terms of rationality and hierarchy, it is helpful to reflect on contemporary political theory implementing Arendt’s critical approach. Arendt’s emphasis on dialogue and debate in the public sphere can be seen as an extension of this idea. Despite affirming rationality in political theory, she differs from the aforementioned political scientists or general political theorists by bringing interaction and political participation into discussion. For Arendt, the public realm is where individuals express their rationality through engagement with others. Interaction is one of the essential elements in rationality’s implementation in politics that makes her approach different from Aristotle’s (350 BC) individual-centered understanding of rationality discussed in Metaphysics. She argues that:

homo faber could be redeemed from his predicament of meaninglessness, the devaluation of all values, and the impossibility of rinding valid standards in a world determined by the category of means and ends, only through the interrelated faculties of action and speech, which produce meaningful stories as naturally as fabrication produces use objects. (Arendt, 1998, p. 236)

Therefore, the teleological orders in Aristotelian hylomorphism and modern political science can be criticized for not giving the deserved meanings of actively participating in the political sphere. It is not only rationality that should be associated with the uniqueness of the human mind but also the search for meaning at individual and societal levels. The affective side of being human also leads to resolving the constant conflict between inclusion/exclusion in political theory and brings another perspective. It also brings about the idea of natality that can be seen as a dynamic potentiality. Arendt argues that each birth brings new possibilities into the world, which resonates with Aristotle’s concept of potentiality.

Nevertheless, Arendt focuses on human action’s unpredictable and transformative power. Human action, which can initiate something new, is essential to politics. She states that:

without the articulation of natality, we would be doomed to swing forever in the ever-recurring cycle of becoming, then without the faculty to undo what we have done and to control at least partially the processes we have let loose, we would be the victims of an automatic necessity bearing all the marks of the inexorable laws which, according to the natural sciences before our time, were supposed to constitute the outstanding characteristic of natural processes. (Arendt, 1998, p. 246)

It is necessary to comprehend that natality involves a strong sense of potentiality but is also immanent to actuality. French Revolution, for instance, is an example of natality that gives birth to new potentialities, such as the concepts of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and the actuality of undoing by overthrowing the monarchy and establishing a republic. It also overlaps with Aristotle’s distinction between human-nonhuman as in the difference Arendt considers between the human world, wherein change and new beginnings are possible, and the natural world, which is conceptualized as governed by unchangeable laws. Similarly, the static nature of political science, which is associated more with institutions, bureaucracies, behavioralism, party politics, and the like, has similarities with natural science by attempting to establish rational, universal, and scientific knowledge about politics. This leads to the exclusion of the political that is equated more with natality as an inclusion having potentialities.

In order to show another reflection of hylomorphism in contemporary political theory, Charlotte Witt’s (2003) gender-based interpretation of this concept is beneficial to see how new social movements take place. She examines the priority of actuality over potentiality by placing patriarchy within the political hierarchy. She discusses the notion of power, for form is prior to matter and thus activity to power. It leads to the priority of the complete over the incomplete substances. Witt argues that “sexual difference—being male and being female—is associated with matter” (p. 115) and Aristotle’s theory of reproduction in which “the male is identified as the active cause of reproduction and the female is not, and the male is complete and the female is incomplete” (p. 116). The inclusion/exclusion dichotomy involves sexes and bodily interpretation. In the Aristotelian concept of hylomorphism, the body is defined as matter, and the soul is the form. Even though they are not separate from each other, the soul is what makes a human being alive and is the source of its essential functions. Thus, the body without the soul will only be a collection of organized matter, absent of life’s characteristics—notably lacking human being’s unique feature of rationality. Witt argues that:

women (and slaves) seem not to have their forms fully; they are, in different ways, defectively rational. In the standard accounts, these statements reflect false beliefs about women (and slaves) and attach clearly political values to purportedly nonnormative concepts. In my interpretation, Aristotle fills in, so to speak, the normative spaces in his theory with the categories of women (and slaves) in a way that reflects their status in his culture. But the explicit gender associations, unlike the normative language, are not intrinsic to his theory. (p. 106)

Even though she touches upon what is included and excluded in this doctrine and opens new paths to discuss, this attempt is misleading in narrowing the issues too much. Her attempt can be analyzed within the primary division between the political theory of embodying normative and more generalizable, pure concepts and their refusal to strongly emphasize locality, precisely minor issues, and identity politics, mainly in the critical theory framework. Despite the second approach’s practical application in Witt’s interpretation of an ancient concept, it fails to develop a comprehensive perspective of what is included and excluded. The main trends in contemporary political theory, gender studies in this case, define the characteristics and scope of the studies in a narrow sense that prevents understanding the complexity of political theory.

In essence, political theory enables grasping historical patterns, human nature, and societal developments and adopts them into changing structures. Hence, the degree to which new social developments and movements should be included in political theory should be discussed. It is not only about illustrating the exclusion of minorities in the political or social realm but also about showing how they should be integrated into the essentials of general political theory. I affirm an interdisciplinary approach, and yet it is still crucial to adopt a broader perspective and understanding the essentials of human nature, history, and political theory.

Consequently, hylomorphism in political theory helps us engage with modern political theory debates to consider the reciprocal relationship between matter and form and its capacity to transform the established antinomies between inclusion and exclusion. Because the interaction between matter and form is dynamic, there is a possibility to influence and reshape form, i.e., the political. Although the Aristotelian notion of hylomorphism prioritizes form over matter, it is still crucial to construct balanced political stability in modern political theory to prevent social unrest and balance societal conflict. Thus, the conflict between inclusion and exclusion will remain in political theory, and it is critical to be aware of it to conduct decent research and develop a well-established theory.

References

Aristotle, & Bostock, D. (1994). Aristotle Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.

Arendt, H. (1998). The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1958).

Buchanan, J. M. (1949). The Pure Theory of Government Finance: A Suggested Approach. Journal of Political Economy, 57(6), 496–505. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1826554

Hayek, F. (1941). The Pure Theory of Capital. Norwich: Jarrold and Sons.

Jouvenel, B. (1963). The Pure Theory of Politics. Michigan: Michigan University Press.

Kelsen, H. (1967). Pure Theory of Law. Berkeley: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520312296

Oakeshott, M. (1991). On Human Conduct. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Witt, C. (2003). Ways of Being Potentiality and Actuality in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.